Maoist rebels kill 15 police in India

Fifteen police officers were killed in the western
Indian state of Maharashtra in a shoot-out with Maoist Revolutionaries on Monday, 2nd February 2009.

They were ambushed Sunday in the jungle near a village in the east of the state, a stronghold of Maoists and other Marxist groups who represent oppressed, landless rural dwellers.

“The patrolling party was ambushed by the Maoists and 15 reactionaries died. The encounter went on for nearly one and a half to two hours,” stated the regions Masses reports.

They say there were regular skirmishes between police and Maoists in
the area, which is close to the border with neighbouring Madhya Pradesh and some 1,000 kilometres (620 miles) by road from the Maharahstra state capital Mumbai.

Indian media on Monday said the Maoists fled with police weapons,
including automatic assault rifles and a mortar shell.

The Maoist peoples war, which grew out of a peasant uprising in 1967, has hit more than half of India’s 29 states and the rebels use a heavily forested region in Chhattisgarh as their headquarters and base themselves and their social base on the masses.